Scripture: I am not ashamed of the gospel,
because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes
Romans 1:16

Look what I have with me this morning. A
starfish! At one time, this starfish was alive and swimming in the
ocean. You probably know what happened. As so often happens, this
starfish was washed up on the beach and because a starfish can't live out of
water, it died.

I heard a story about a man who was vacationing in
Mexico. One day he was walking along a deserted beach when he saw a man
approaching from the opposite direction. As he watched the man, he saw
that the man kept bending down, picking something up and throwing it into the
water. As he got closer, he could see that the man was picking up starfish
that had washed up onto the beach and he was throwing them back into the water.

As the two men met, he said, "Good morning. I was
wondering what you are doing."

"Why, I am throwing these starfish back into the ocean,
because if I don't, they will die."

"I
understand, but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach and you can't
possibly get all of them. Besides, there are hundreds of miles of beaches
along this coast and the same thing is happening on every one of those
beaches. Can't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?"

The man bent down and picked up another starfish and threw it back into the
ocean. He smiled at the man and said, "I made a difference to that
one, didn't I?"

All over the world there are
people who are like a fish out of water. They are dying because they don't
know about Jesus. Can we make a difference? You bet we can!
Maybe we can't get to all of them, but we can tell those that we meet each day
about the love of Jesus. Each time that we tell someone about Jesus, we
can say, "I made a difference to that one."

Dear Lord, help us to make a difference in the lives of the
people we meet by sharing the love of Jesus with them.